Ben Stein vs. Richard Dawkins

This evening I watched Ben Stein's Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed documentary. It's a look at how evolutionists(Darwinists) have placed a stranglehold on academic discussion on intelligent design. Their reasoning? If you allow intelligent design discussion then we'll end up back in the Dark Ages where science is lost to religion.

Here's the full length movie on YouTube.


The academics Ben Stein speaks with on Darwinism make a valid point while getting to the meat of the argument itself: Darwin never explained the ORIGIN of man at all, just what he thought happened after the atoms were already arranged! And that is the place there Darwinists and Creationists painfully collide. Midway between them, leaning a little more right than left, you have intelligent design. "Something awfully smart created those first atoms! So intelligent that we're unraveling layers upon layers of mysteries within the atom itself every year!" 

The sentiment expressed continually throughout the film is that the continued study of Darwinism for scientists eventually leads to atheism. I want to say that I can see this would be true for at least those academics and scientists who don't have a backbone and/or only want to climb the academic ladder to stardom and money. Or at least tenure and a somewhat comfortable retirement plan. However, I have also personally known many teachers, scientists, and those who began as scientists but left the field who have said that the further they looked at science overall then the more religious they became-- not the reverse. But if they had only the confines of Darwinism to use as a template for all their accepted work then yes, they'd have suffered a crisis of faith or just seen their curiosity wither and die. I think perhaps this may be the intent of the establishment.  Those teachers I knew who became more spiritual at the end did leave the field for other private studies. They knew their career was at stake because they could not in good conscience teach something they knew was false.

One of the highlights of the film came at 1:27(that's one hour and twenty-seven minutes) Richard Dawkins explains why he believes in intelligent design! It's a riot because afterwards Ben Stein asks him to clearly state that he does not believe in any god or God of any religion whatsoever. However Richard Dawkins doesn't even hear what he'd previously admitted. He wasn't tricked into anything. There was no slick sophistry involved. Here's part of the conversation. To see the full thing you'd have to watch the movie : 




Richard: "So it couldn't have just jumped into existence spontaneously." 

Whoooahhh! Wait. Isn't that what the anti-creationists aka. DARWINISTS are trying to shove down everyone's throats including the Big Bang Theory?! That somehow this... thing... just happened and there was nothing intelligent about it?!  But a so-called hard core atheist thinks that someone super smart(elsewhere in the universe, of course) designed us(is he hearing himself?!), planted our genome here on this planet and then ...... sped off back to whatever lovely world they came from. But of course that race of super smart beings or being evolved by some Darwinian process themselves, because you know Darwinism has to play into our genesis at some point right?

Chicken and egg, Richard. I'm calling bullshit on that, my friend. Who made that first race of beings who supposedly made us? ... if they did indeed evolve Darwinian style and were not spontaneously sprouted from some God's head fully formed.

The logistics of this argument make my head spin! It seems quite obvious to me at this point that the most obvious questions are not being asked in the classroom and unfortunately for the child who does want to ask .... I think their teacher may be inclined to not engage the child in conversation at all because they fear for their job.

An idea I've been pondering and refining for some time now: Man created religion as a way to explain the mysteries of God Science. Within gnosis we're able to see the forest(we live in it) AND the trees(we dream them) because we soar above it through his eyes to see what it is he wants to share. That intrinsic and basic connection we share with him is what gives us our sense of wonder, our sense of awe about the universe and even the trees and butterflies. Being the body of the All itself, how can we not be amazed?

Infinity takes a backseat

When you read this article think about all the possibilities which could have existed in the past two thousand years but didn't. Think of the technological death which occurred (several times, in fact!) due to literalist religions stamping down any new ideas and stringing people up in a noose, tossing them on a bonfire, crucifying them, or pulling them between two horses(or trees) until their bodies fell apart.

It is sobering to see just how far the human mind pushed itself, willingly, testing boundaries of the physical world on paper or animal skins because we had no other way to do so physically. So naturally now that we have the ability to test the physical world the majority of us sit on our asses and play XBox360 numbing ourselves to the infinite possibilities which exist all around.

We need more Archimedes and Einsteins to wake us up.

Idea of Infinity Stretched Back to Third Century B.C.By: Robin Lloyd

Date: 17 February 2009 Time: 05:49 AM ET

CHICAGO - The first mathematical use of the concept of actual infinity has been pushed back some 2,000 years via a new analysis of a tattered page of parchment on which a medieval monk in Constantinople copied the third century B.C. work of the Greek mathematician Archimedes.

Infinity is one of the most fundamental questions in mathematics and still remains an unsolved riddle. For instance, if you add or subtract a number from infinity, the remaining value is still infinity, some Indian philosophers said. Mathematicians today refer to actual infinity as an uncountable set of numbers such as the number of points existing on a line at the same time, while a potential infinity is an endless sequence that unfolds consecutively over time.

The parchment page comes from the 348-page Archimedes Palimpsest, the oldest copy of some of the Greek genius' writings, which were hidden for centuries because a monk partly scraped them off the animal-skin parchment in the 13th century A.D. to clear the pages to print a prayer book. Also, a forger painted pictures over the prayer book hundreds of years after that.

A scholar named Johan Ludvig Heiberg in 1906 studied the written remnants behind the religious words to discover the Palimpsest, finding evidence of Archimedes' systematic use of the concept of infinity in a portion of the document called the Method of Mechanical Theorems. In the past few years, the Palimpsest was re-examined at a far higher level of detail using multispectral imaging and also a hair-thin X-ray scanning technique at Stanford University's Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource in California. The scanner can image a million pixels in less than one hour.

With one of the X-ray images, Stanford classicist Reviel Netz made out the edge of a torn page, where Heiberg had figured just one line of text was missing. The X-rays produced images of iron from the ink used on the document.

Netz examined the scan and was able to deduce the presence of previously unseen Greek letters, kappa and alpha, which were likely followed by an iota to spell the Greek word for "and." This led Netz to conclude that two lines were missing, rather than one and to arrive at a new reading of the passage, physicist Uwe Bergmann of the Synchrotron facility told a small group of reporters here Sunday at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"Scholars are now talking about some new words which are emerging in the reconstruction of the evidence in introduction to the Method, that Archimedes' concept of infinity was rather different from what was previously thought," Bergmann said.

In fact, the new reading reveals that Archimedes was engaged in math that made conceptual use of actual infinity, as Netz describes on the Web site ArchimedesPalimpsest.org. The calculations involved adding infinite numbers of sums, such as the number of triangles inside a prism, as well as the number of lines inside a rectangle. Archimedes tried to argue that these values are equal to each other, making a statement about actual infinity, not just potential infinity, Nets writes.

The Palimpsest resides at the Walters Museum of Art in Baltimore.

The Archimedes Palimpsest project forced researchers to come up with a new system to scan large objects, Bergmann said. A commercial-grade X-ray scanning machine might take a year to complete a scan that the Stanford Synchrotron now can complete in half a day, he said.

"It is now taking milliseconds rather than seconds to get each pixel — that has been for us the great novelty," he said.

The Age Of The Earth & Religious Uproar

Young Earth Creationists rejoice!! For you have a momentous new task before you- find another scripture(or reinterpret a previously recycled idea) which can explain away an entire mountain range island which points out that scientists' theory concerning the age of our planet is correct.

It has been immensely entertaining watching the emotional fireworks show in the comment area. I've listed a few of the more interesting comments below, after the article.

Chunk of Original Earth Found
Pocket of rock survived 4.5 billion years without being mixed by plate tectonics

By Larry O'Hanlon

updated 8/11/2010 1:59:20 PM ET

Imagine you suddenly discovered part of your umbilical cord was still attached. Scientists just did that for the planet Earth. What's been found is a clear sign that beneath the crust in northern Canada there is a chunk of pristine, undisturbed rock from the time when Earth was nothing but molten rock.

The evidence comes in the form of lava rocks that, themselves, are a mere 60 million years old. But these rocks contain an early Earth mixture of helium, lead and neodymium isotopes which suggest the mantle rock beneath the crust that yielded them is a virgin pocket of Earth's original material.

That pocket had survived for 4.5 billion years under Baffin Island without being mixed by plate tectonics or erupted onto the surface.

"I was surprised that any of the (original) mantle survived," said geoscientist Matthew Jackson of Boston University. He is the lead author on a paper announcing the discovery in this week's issue of the journal Nature. "Finding a piece of the original mantle has been a holy grail. The original Earth was a big ball of magma. That's our (planet's) original composition."

The discovery has surprised other researchers as well.

"Even if a vestige of such material remained, it seems unlikely that it would be found in any samples from Earth's surface or the shallow subsurface that are available to geologists," observed David Graham of Oregon State University in Corvallis, who wrote a commentary in the same issue of Nature. "Yet that is what (this) new evidence suggests."

One of the obstacles in finding rocks from such ancient mantle, up to now, has been that researchers had assumed an early Earth was composed of rocks with helium and lead isotope matching those of a type of ancient meteorite called a chondrite.

That may be true up to a point, said Jackson. Some recent research by scientists at the Carnegie Institution of Washington has suggested that the Earth's early mantle would also have tell-tale neodymium isotopes that are unlike chondrites.

"That turns out to be the same as we find in these lavas (from Baffin Island)," said Jackson.

The other signs of untouched ancient mantle material -- which has not before lost any of its material to Earth's surface or been otherwise tainted -- is large amount of the isotopes helium-3 relative to helium-4. There is also an very old lead-isotope signature. It was these three criteria -- the helium, lead and neodymium -- that led Jackson and his team to the conclusion Baffin Islands massive volcanic cliffs are made of the oldest material on the planet.

As for how much of this original mantle might be around, the only way to tell is to look at lava rocks and see if they came from such stuff, said Jackson.

"We have no idea how common it might be," Jackson told Discovery News. Models suggest that up to 10 percent of the early mantle might still be around. But the new discovery could change those models and their predictions. "It turns everything on its head."

~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~

A commenter named "Mekinism" has been wonderfully instructive in the YEC perspective.

"Science doesn't 'prove' anything. Science is a tool used by humans to interpret facts."

"i've been seeing these atheist (and yes humanism is a religion) scientists publishing more and more 'big stories' lately. They have to stick with what the know still works these days - evolution/billions of years. They go on and and on about 'the facts' with the same old logical fallacies about how 'science has proved' something. If you start with the old concepts of uniformitarianism and no catastrophic events - you'll get your billions of years. If you start with a literal, straight reading of the Bible - you'll get around 6000 - and yes, the same 'facts' will back it up."

"apollyon - very true - science is science - so why does science try to answer a history question when it comes to origins? there is absolutely no way to empirically test the age of a basalt flow without making a LOT of assumptions. In this case - assumptions rooted in atheism.

The consistant Christian has the inerrant Word of God as his starting point and views the facts from that standpoint."

Oh no, "Pbarb" caught onto the fact that this YEC'er believes science is encumbered with too many atheists and not enough literalist Christians!!!! He/she said:

"Science doesn't make assumptions based on atheism (as you stated, Mekinism). To state you can only look at facts through "humanistic or biblical glasses" shows your bias, as if the Christianity is the only religion out there. And then to state that conclusions made through those lenses have just as much basis in fact is just ridiculous. For example, a conclusion made through "biblical glasses" evolution can not have occurred since God created man and animals. This is obviously not the case, and if you feel otherwise then there is probably no point in arguing. Science is ideally unbiased, but when assumptions have to be made they are based on logic and knowledge, nothing else."

Mekinism comes back with:

"I also didn't say that science makes atheistic assumptions - i said it's a tool - that if one believes there is no God - their findings will reflect that. If one starts from the Bible - then it shows something else -"

Exactly. Starting from the Bible makes absolute sense!!! .... for about ten minutes. Then you remember that the Earth isn't flat and the sun doesn't revolve around the Earth.

Mekinism finishes off that cringe-worthy statement with something I wanted to crawl under the table and hide from, it was so forehead-slappable.

"as for Christianity being the "only religion out there" i'm just standing on the Bibles own claim to being the infallible Word of God."

If you didn't cry in abject horror of that circular logic go back and reread the sentence.

Einstein's Religion

"I'm not an atheist, and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written these books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's pantheism, but admire even more his contribution to modern thought because he is the first philosopher to deal with the soul and body as one, not two separate things."

G.S. Viereck, Glimpses of the Great(Macauley, New York, 1930)

In April of 1929, Cardinal O'Connell, Archbishop of Boston, admonished the members of the New England Catholic Club of America not to read anything on relativity because it "befogged speculation producing universal doubt about God and his Creation... cloaking the ghastly apparition of atheism."

New York Times, 25 April 1929, p.60


Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein of the Institutional Synagogue in New York cabled Einstein simply, "Do you believe in God?"

Einstein replied: "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings."

So Einstein was, in fact, a deist. Not an atheist. Not even a "practical atheist" as so many atheists try to claim.

Einstein always fought the label of atheism and made a sharp distinction between his disbelief in a personal god and atheism:

"Speaking of the spirit that informs modern scientific investigations, I am of the opinion that all the finer speculations in the realm of science spring from a deep religious feeling, and that without such feeling they would not be fruitful. I also believe that, this kind of religiousness, which makes itself felt today in scientific investigations, is the only creative religious activity of our time. The art of today can hardly be looked upon at all as expressive of our religious instincts."

Einstein's theory of relativity was, as we now see in hindsight by biographical scholars, based on religious concepts. For example, in Spinoza's Ethics he declared, "God is immutable or all his attributes are immutable[like space]," and "an extended thing are God's attributes." In accordance with Spinoza, Einstein interpreted the term "endure" in the verse "the Heavens endure from everlasting to everlasting" in the sense of immutable existence.

What happened next? Einstein made what he called the "biggest blunder" of his career. In 1917 he modified the relativity field equation by introducing an additional term, the so-called "cosmological constant," in order to obtain a static unchanging universe. He essentially ruled out Big Bang 'spread' stating that the universe was somehow made and is stationary, excluding the orbits of galactic masses.

Steady expansion of the universe was only discovered in the late 1920's at the Mount Wilson Observatory. Nevertheless, Einstein was still kicking himself. Instead of trusting his gut instinct he tinkered with the formula to allow for religious ideas from his beloved Spinoza.

See what not trusting your instincts will do?

Earthcentrism- Look How Far We've Come

Young Earth Creationists state that our universe is only 6,000 years old. Oh wait. They changed their mind a few years back and added four thousand to that. So make that ten millenia. This number is based on some sort of pseudo science and literalist interpretation of the book of Genesis. Their data changes every few years to keep up with the twists and turns real science.

According to YEC's dinosaurs were friendly and played with Adam and Eve. Carnivorous dinosaurs only became meat eaters after The Fall. Sharp horns and teeth were previously only used for play or mating displays. Another theory is that God miraculously changed all the newly damned carnivore's teeth to go from being flat to suddenly fitting the carnivorous profile(sharp canines and sharper front teeth for tearing) we now recognize.

Since the Big Bang theory was proposed, examined, and had entire new branches of science(stellar radiation, etc) submit information concerning the age of galaxies and stars farther away from us as well as the MOVEMENT of these formations, we've come a long way. Scientists now believe the earth is around 4.6 billion years old and have fossil records to support this claim. Not that YEC's care much. Their method of 'debunking' geological science is pointing at the Bible and then plugging their ears. You could try discussing archeological finds with a Young Earther but you'd get nowhere fast.

Scientists start by looking at what IS instead of what is written about the past. They go from zero and build their case based on what they see right in front of them. If what they find happens to coincide with historical writings then that's great! It's an amazing piece of history which was written about by humans in the past and celebrated as such. But if what they find in a laboratory contradicts what is found in an archeological record then the facts as they found them are published and that's that. The lab scientists let the other historians fight it out.

Earthcentrism(our planet being the center of the universe or at least the beginning of anything worthwhile) is an egotistical idea which has been molded over time, though not by much. Literalists have taken to flouting interpretations of the book of Genesis without anything at all to back them up, making for some pretty messed up rhetoric to feed to the common masses. Let's examine a few arguments:

Philo Judaeus(Philon the Jew) wrote, initially quoting Genesis in his tract On the Account of the World's Creation given by Moses(De Opificio Mundi), "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." "Beginning should not be conceived in a chronological sense for time cannot be before there was a world. Time began either simultaneously with the world or after it. For time is a measured space determined of the world's movement, and since movement could not be prior to the object moving ... it follows of necessity that time also is coeval with or later born than the world."

That is the earthcentrism I am speaking of. Everything good or worthwhile revolving around what's going on with Earth. All the other planets and stars are trivial. Right? Why can't time be before our planet existed? As you can see Philo created some weak rhetoric. All you have to do is ask the very opposite questions he is proposing and his argument falls apart like a house of cards.

We're essentially talking about Schrodinger's cat; "An observation being made can only then be measured." But humans and the mighty microscope are not the end all. Just because we didn't witness it doesn't mean that it doesn't hold value. The cat is both alive and dead based on WITNESS to the box opening. God being the one who crammed the cat in the box and opened it afterward gives us the story. Or is it a prophet writing down the words of God? And how do we stretch God's "days" out through 4.6 billion years or even a mere thousand years? We don't have a witness. Not one. Because we were not in existence yet. That is the paradox.

Augustine of Hippo, for all his wishy-washy and confused religious leanings, had at least enough sense to ask the right questions. "If God made heaven and earth in some beginning of time, what was he doing before he made heaven and earth? And why did he suddenly decide to make what he had not previously made through eternal time?"

In other words, why did God suddenly decide to create our cosmos? Augustine asks why while Einstein asks how. Religion and science meet.

Though Augustine couldn't have known it at the time this is what science proves thus far-

Big Bang's proposed explosion date: average of 13.5 billion years ago.
Geology's date for the Earth's "birth": 4.6 billion years ago
= BIG DARN GAP!

By the time of Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century, the issue was once again up in the air and this time moderation prevailed. In Aquinas tract De aeternitate mundi which summarized the 'beginninglessness' of the world he declared, "We hold by faith alone, and it cannot be proved by demonstration, that the world did not always exist... the reason being that the newness of the world cannot be demonstrated by the world itself."

At least the word 'faith' was used in its proper context. Science was in no position to sway anyone at that time. Too many questions and not enough technology to run with ideas. And poor Galileo learned the hard way through house arrest that even leaps in scientific achievements with the telescope were not allowed. The Church was too egotistical to allow reason to prevail.

If you only have science to give age to something in a local region then how do you compare it to anything else outside your region if you don't have the tools to study this farther region? What is your solid point of reference? Until we began dating our own sun and closest stars within our own galaxy and then began reaching beyond, we really had no hope of being objective on the matter of age at all. Our point of reference(Earth) was too close. Too young. And far too changeable with its layers and weather and erosion.

Einstein, at least, was remembered fondly by the Church. Even with as much as the man was dragged into dialogues about religion he managed to stay true to himself. Pope John Paul II said in November of 1979 at the Pontifical Academy meeting held in honor of the centenary birth of Einstein,

"On the occasion of this solemn commemoration of Einstein, I would like to confirm again the Council's declaration on the autonomy of science in its function of searching for the truth inscribed during the creation by the finger of God. Filled with admiration for the genius of the great scientist, in whom is revealed the imprint of the creative spirit, without intervening in any way with a judgment on the doctrines concerning the great systems of the universe, which is not in her power to make, the Church nevertheless recommends these doctrines for consideration by the theologians in order to discover the harmony that exists between scientific truth and revealed truth."

By dousing a good fifty percent of the Church's arrogant attitude much was gained. Science flourished.

Einstein relegated his personal religion to being defined as "awe." And honestly, isn't that a safer path to take when we are still such a young species?

Losing Faith vs. Atheism

This question is open to anyone and everyone who'd like to share(rant/rave/etc) in the comment area:

Do you think that becoming an atheist is better than simply stating that you have lost your faith in your current religion?

Do you think atheism could be a stepping stone toward gnosis?

Do you feel that atheists are a shorter distance from gnosis than those in a literalist interpretative faith BECAUSE at least they are using their reasoning and logic to state: "I don't see a reason to believe in God because there is no proof."

Consider this: If a person has only been exposed to literalist interpretation and faith religions then they can only see what Jehovah has done, not Pleroma. They cannot quantify what Jehovah does compared to what He cannot do. If they have no knowledge of the distinction between the two entities then they are metaphorical infants.

The following is a video posted by Steve from TrueBlueHealer.com concerning the atheist of all atheists, Richard Dawkins, essentially bowing out of the argument of theism. Coincidentally(??) I just picked up Dawkin's book The God Delusion the other day at the library and was about to begin reading it. My heart really isn't in it now that I know what a cop-out it is.

Blogs of Note

Is it any wonder that with as freedom loving as gnostics are that I would find a home-away-from-home in an atheist's blog? I'm not kidding! The Atheist Camel is exactly what it claims to be: "...an oasis airing his perspective on theists, religion and politics, beliefs, God, gods, the supernatural; science, reality, reason, logic, ethics, morality...and the lack thereof." I find myself positively commenting on just about every updated post there. "Hump" is the most cogent and eloquent atheist I have ever had the pleasure to meet. Gnostics do have a great deal in common with atheists if you squint and tilt your head the right way... I'll speak more in depth about this in a future article. It will surprise you.

I have discovered a number of blogs which are havens of freedom and free thinking and I'd like to share them with you. On the side column you will find a list of links titled Blogging For Freedom. Naturally, it is a work in progress. If you have a blog you'd like to nominate to be added to that section simply comment or email me directly at gnosticunrest@hotmail.com.

Science vs. Faith

An excerpt from Mark Noll's book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind,

"Attempts to think-both profoundly and as Christians- about history, nature, the arts, and society have been frustrated by the very success of an institutional arrangement that maintains several mutually distinct forms of academic endeavor."

Unless the soul can be quantified in a scientific way, the great divide between evangelism and modern academia seems an uncrossable chasm. I don't think it's about proving God's existence or us being good enough for Him to show us proof of himself out of pure generosity. I think it's about slowing down as a society; about not getting so caught up in all the shiny marvels we discover daily under a microscope. Life is about the delicate balancing act between the two disciplines. If we grow so enamored with the past(keeping to the Old Testament ways) as the evangelical faith has, we will never be able to grow into a new future. Look to the future too closely and passionately and we'll overlook the serendipitous lessons from our forefathers.

A delicate dance indeed.

I believe that while our theology differs from evangelists' we can also learn a great deal from one another. There are few writing and teaching gnostic scholars just as there are few evangelical writing and teaching scholars. The money just isn't there. And unless that scholar feels particularly moved to 'evangelize' cheaply, they just wont do it. Everyone has bills to pay. Why not keep your theology to yourself instead?

If this chasm could be bridged between the secular and the spiritual, imagine how learning could progress! Imagine how society could be changed for the better.